By Michael Bennett
Local Journalism Initiative
Ridgetown Independent News
Jane Baldwin-Marvell was just a young girl in Toronto when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a fierce storm on Lake Superior that fateful night of Nov. 10, 1975.
Fifty years later, Baldwin-Marvell is taking part in a historic memorial swim to honour the former Queen of the Lakes and its 29-man crew who perished.
The Ridgetown resident is one of 68 swimmers participating in the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim, a 411-mile journey that began July 26 on the eastern edge of Lake Superior and is scheduled to end on Aug. 27 at the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle.
The swimmers are symbolically completing the route the Fitzgerald took on its last journey, as the 729-foot ship was carrying 26,000 tons of taconite ore pellets from Superior, Wisc., to the steel mills on Zug Island in Detroit.
“I vaguely remember it as a child, hearing about it on the news,” Baldwin-Marvell said of her memory of the Fitzgerald’s sinking.
She remembers seeing freighters unloading cargo in silos and terminals along the Toronto waterfront.
“Back in those days, Toronto was a working port, not like today, where you have Queen’s Quay and all of the nice shops and restaurants,” she said. “I remember seeing those massive ships and I’ve seen storms on the lake … I can visualize what it must have been like and how terrifying it was.”
Baldwin-Marvell also recalls one year later, when Gordon Lightfoot released his hit song ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,’ which further magnified the legacy of the ship and its sinking.
“The song really solidified how everybody felt,” she said. “I think Gordon Lightfoot absolutely touched the whole heart, the haunting words and the instrumental pieces, the guitar that sounded like the whining of the wind.”
Baldwin-Marvell, a Grade 6-7 French Immersion teacher at McNaughton Avenue School in Chatham, first heard about the memorial swim when Jim Dreyer, the event organizer, was interviewed on Windsor Morning CBC Radio in May.
When registration opened in June, Baldwin-Marvell was one of the first to sign up.
She quickly raised the minimum $2,500 – thanks to family and friends – as the swim is also a fundraiser for the preservation of Whitefish Point Lighthouse, located near Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
The memorial swim consists of 17 stages, each approximately 30 miles in length. The stages will be held on alternating days, in case of any weather-related delays. There will be four swimmers per stage, who will take turns spending approximately 30 minutes in the water until they reach their destination.
Baldwin-Marvell is taking part in the 15th stage, which starts at Lexington, Mich. and ends at the Bluewater Bridge. The Lexington to Port Huron stage is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 23, starting at 7 a.m., but the date is subject to change pending any delays.
The odyssey began at the site of the Fitzgerald’s sinking, about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, with the permission of families of the 29 crew members.
The swimmers will be accompanied by a support boat, which will have a licensed captain and first mate, a paramedic, a doctor, a rescue swimmer, and a film crew, as the event will be featured in ‘The Legend Lives On,’ a documentary commemorating the Fitzgerald’s 50th anniversary. Swimmers will ride on the support boat until it’s their turn to return to the water.
When she applied, Baldwin-Marvell had to answer a questionnaire about her swimming experience, including how far she could swim in 30 minutes and whether she was comfortable swimming in the dark, as the days would be shorter toward the end of August.
Baldwin-Marvell said she was a competitive swimmer in clubs in Etobicoke and high school, as she qualified for provincial championship meets.
Since moving to Ridgetown 20 years ago, she has swum regularly at the Chatham-Kent YMCA. She has also swum long distances with local triathletes in training, including a 2.5-kilometre swim in Lake Erie on Canada Day.
Baldwin-Marvell has recently been preparing for her journey by swimming a minimum of one kilometre daily at the Gable Rees Rotary Pool in Blenheim while the YMCA pool was undergoing maintenance.
“I know in a pool, I can do a mile in 35 minutes,” she said. “In a lake, if it’s calm and clear conditions, I can probably do close to that. But some other factors could come into play, like waves, currents and wind.”
The 16th stage runs the length of the St. Clair River to Algonac, with the final 30-mile leg crossing Lake St. Clair to the Detroit Yacht Club tentatively set for Aug. 27.
A memorial service will be held at the Mariners’ Church of Detroit (corner of Jefferson Avenue at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel) on Aug. 28, at 12:10 p.m. The names of the sailors who perished will be read, followed by the church bell ringing 29 times “for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald,” as depicted in Lightfoot’s song.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was only in service for 17 years when it sank. At 729-feet, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes when it was launched on June 7, 1958, at the Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge, just south of Detroit, next to Zug Island, the Fitzgerald’s destination on its final voyage. The Fitzgerald made 784 round trips from Wisconsin to steel mills in Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo during its 17 years on the lakes.
The Fitzgerald left Superior, Wis., on the afternoon of Nov. 9, 1975, and it ran into a fierce winter storm on Nov. 10 with hurricane-force winds and 35-foot waves.
The ship, being followed by the Arthur A. Anderson, disappeared from radar just after 7 p.m. and was only 17 miles from Whitefish Bay.
Three days later, searchers found the Fitzgerald, broken into three pieces, 530 feet down on the Canadian side of Lake Superior.
